


Manhattan Transfer

by Prochytes



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Luke Cage (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017), Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23988022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: Four times Jack Harkness didn’t know with whom he was really getting intimate in New York, and one time he was told.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Claire Temple, Jack Harkness/Colleen Wing, Jack Harkness/David "Micro" Lieberman, Jack Harkness/Elektra Natchios, Jack Harkness/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. The Night Nurse

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _The Defenders_ , _The Punisher_ to the end of S1, _Iron Fist_ to the end of S1, _Daredevil_ to the end of S2, and _Luke Cage_ to the end of S2. Angst and dark themes.

Jack had been running a con, on the Lower East Side. He still tried his hand at the old stuff, every now and again – five-finger exercises, to keep in practice – and clearly more was needed, because the Lower East Side job went south. Jack’s roper barely survived; Jack did not. In itself, of course, this was little more than a speed-bump, a sleeping policeman (Jack shook that idiom from his head like a burr from his shoe; it was a rhythm of speech he was trying to forget). But that still left him with an ally bleeding out from a GSW, in a city full of blunt edges and sharp questions. 

“There’s a woman,” the roper (Mickey? Rickey? Jack should know) somehow wheezed. “She can see me right, if you can get me to her.”

“A doctor?”

“Kinda. In the _barrio_ , they call her the Night Nurse. For the right money, she’ll fix you, if she likes your face.” A chuckle bubbled from the wheeze. “And we both know that everyone likes that face.”

The Night Nurse was a woman of sharp edges and blunt questions. Jack recognized a tekko-kagi on the wall of her makeshift theatre, which didn’t hang there like an ornament. 

“How does it work for you?” she asked, when the butcher’s bill was paid, and Rickey (or Mickey) was sleeping. 

Jack, at once, was wary. “What do you mean?”

“Holes in your clothes.” Long fingers grazed his shirt. “Blood on your skin, and I think that’s yours. You’re not bulletproof, but you must be something. Belladonna infusion? Or is your shit built in?” 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Don’t be sure.” A siren keened and languished in the distance. “There are times – maybe in a hospital, maybe someplace else – when the crazy slips its scalpel in the world. You can see it happen, if you have eyes: that doesn’t make you special, but it makes you there. I knew a man: a man who could not broken.”

“What happened?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She blinked, and Jack saw that the unbreakable man had let her down, as unbreakable men are prone to do. “This a slow dance, hero, or are you gonna kiss me?”

Jack looked down and drank in the lithe, tired body, the weary eyes - hot as hell, and twice as harrowed. “Yeah – I am.”


	2. Micro

Jack was now divorced from all the world’s intelligence agencies. None of them were amicable exes. When he needed the lowdown on whom the spooks were haunting at the moment, he liked to support small industries, and shop locally. 

Which was how he found himself… somewhere (Still NYC, from the travel time? There had been a car ride, and a blindfold), in a shitty tech-Aladdin mancave. The range of hardware was almost as impressive as that of the cereal boxes. His contact had the bright, darting eyes of the way-too-smart. Jack tried to make himself comfortable for the statutory exposition. 

His contact had other irons in the fire: that much was visible from the screens. Most of them bore images of some guy who had been in the news lately (War hero? War criminal? Both? Jack had not really been paying attention). One feed in an isolated corner followed a family scene. Jack noticed while pretending not to, and made some leaps. 

The kiss, when Jack finally engineered it (brush of the knees, hand on the shoulder, urgent lips that faltered, now, at last), was intended as a gift. His contact had something in mind, no doubt, for the war (anti-)hero. Perhaps the plan was to ship him in with a flourish, to save a day, like some wounded pariah from Lemnos (Why had Jack thought of that?). There wasn’t much to be done about the mission; as for the family, Jack could at least offer his ally the gift of betrayal. Only in betrayal could one think clearly.

The dry lips were still, for a moment, upon Jack’s. Then, they parted. Jack closed his eyes against the moment. This was why he did not see the syringe. 

Jack awoke, immobile, in a Brooklyn alley. No wiser, maybe, but, at least, informed.


	3. The Daughter of the Dragon

Jack still sometimes patronized the fight clubs. He had tapped the claret more than once himself – in Southwark, in Shoreditch, in Stepney, before there were Queensbury Rules to be forgotten. These days, he preferred to watch. 

He saw her in the cage against two brutes, laying down pain like that might go out of fashion (which, as Jack was uniquely qualified to attest, it never would). Her opponents might have been reassured (probably, not), had it been as clear to them as it was to Jack that it wasn’t really they whom she was fighting. He caught her eye as she swayed back to the wire at the end of the match – flushed, unmarred, and so, so broken.

He heard her story, in the thin hours before dawn, between those legs which knew much more than how to kick, above that spread, across the pillow, of long, black hair. She had a mentor, and she doubted. She owed him her whole world; he was older than her, and so very wise. Surely, the great plan made sense; yet still, she doubted. 

The mentor sounded like a pluperfect asshole. Jack just stroked her cheek, and held his peace. A faith which needed that much talk was gangrenous already, without his intervention. Jack’s hand moved lower, more insistent. He smiled as she threshed at the touch of the undying.


	4. The Devil's Advocate

The night air was heavy with the smell of meats: chorizo, pepperoni, Parma ham. The bedroom was above a deli in the Kitchen – named for Napoleon, or Wellington, or another victor in battles long ago. There was some kind of a back-story to why they were here and not downtown. Apartment refurb? Was that it? Jack was too drunk to remember, or to care.

The lawyer in (now, out of) the fancy suit was staring at him with those pretty eyes. The pale forehead was slick with sweat; they had been busy. Those worshipping eyes would forgive a man for any shit he pulled. Jack Harkness could take scorn, or indifference, or naked hate. He no longer had the strength to stand forgiveness.

Jack closed the eyes with kisses and lying whispers. He slipped out of the bedclothes, and walked away.


	5. The Black Sky

“I’m leaving New York,” said Jack.

“That’s overdue.”

“I like to think Jack Harkness brings the fun.”

“You do.” Malice sharpened a shiv from the cut-glass voice. “But you’ve been so achingly slow to work out the pattern.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Come now, Jack. Do you still not see who you’ve been screwing? The medic, a scalded child of the mean streets. The technologist, stropping a razor mind on grief for a family lost. The girl who devotedly follows an immortal fraud, while her bleeding heart just paints her knuckles red. The poor white boy made good, in the pretty suit. And you end, of course, where your enterprise began.” She kissed his cheek. “The woman twice-dead.”

“You know that kinda casts you as the bitch.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Serpent-fast, her sais were in her hands. “Shall we?”

Jack cracked his neck, and beckoned. “After you.”

FINIS


End file.
